“What I found was damning,” she said. “While the FBI was investigating, several arms of the government were shielding what was going on.” The Turks and Israelis had planted “moles” in military and academic institutions which handled nuclear technology. Edmonds says there were several transactions of nuclear material every month, with the Pakistanis being among the eventual buyers. “The network appeared to be obtaining information from every nuclear agency in the United States,” she said. They were helped, she says, by the high-ranking State Department official who provided some of their moles – mainly PhD students – with security clearance to work in sensitive nuclear research facilities. These included the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New Mexico, which is responsible for the security of the US nuclear deterrent.

The story was covered in Iran, Pakistan, Israel, Netherlands… bloggers are helping to spread the story and more international media outlets are picking up on it.